Free The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro by Paul Theroux

from the kissing sound, a silk thigh slipping against another silk thigh, I knew she had taken her dress off. I headed toward the silken sound and realized she was in another room, the door open. We were in her large suite whose floor plan I did not yet understand. But I got to know it well; we were to spend hours of the night on that floor. I got to know all the carpets and all the sharp edges of furniture, the tables, the obstacles, the sliding oblongs of moonlight.
    More distinct sounds: the familiar one of a cork being popped out of a champagne bottle, of glass flutes being chinked on a marble-topped table, and for a moment I thought, She will need a light. But when I heard the explosive release of the cork I knew she was able to manage in the dark. And now I could make out her profile in the darkness, for there was no real darkness in Taormina. The word “chiaroscuro” said it all—she was a clear shadow, a fragrant presence. I smelled her, I heard her, then I saw her, luminous and tinged blue in the Sicilian moonlight, as though glowing, radioactive.
    But even then, especially then, in her suite, hearing the champagne cork, dazed by the crushed lilies of her perfume which was powerful in the dark, and reflecting on her admitting me at last to her room—her mirrored boudoir I had glimpsed from the distant front door, her bed with its frilly coverlet, her fur slippers, her silks like perfect skin, her kissing me with her famished mouth—even then I felt it might all be a trick. She might be teasing me, tantalizing me as she had before.
    I was reminded of the many times she had exposed herself to me, shown me her breasts, opened her legs casually, held her gloved hands seductively between her legs. The worst for me, the cruelest of her teasing—if it
was
teasing and not indifference that I took for sensuality—was when she sat next to me and leaned over, placing her thin hand straight down on my stiffening penis, first exploring it and then using it like a handle to steady herself, while she said in a lecturing tone, “I am sorry, I hardly know you. I cannot imagine what you want from me. You seem to be a very presumptuous young man. Where did you get these ideas? It is so hard for me to say 'you'. I should be addressing you as
Sie,
not
du
—'you' is just useless...”
    She had used the flat of her hand to press down harder, and then I felt her warm palm and active fingers. Lecturing me with her voice but keeping her fascinated hand against my hard-on—that was the worst time. A woman who would do that would do anything. I did not assume because we were licking each other and kissing in the suite that we would become lovers. I was bracing myself for another reversal, more frustration.
    That was why, when I said I loved her, I did so with hatred. Even pressed against her parted thighs I felt great hostility. As I spoke into her ear I was possessed by an impulse to bite it, and saying “I love you,” I felt a strong desire to hit her. I spoke the endearments through gritted teeth, trembling, feeling violent, wishing to push her to the floor and shove her legs apart.
    I think she knew this. She was trembling, fearful, cowering. She knew how much I resented the way she had treated me, how I disliked her most for making me say this, like the young peasant boy in my folktale woodcut who was forced to endure humiliation to obtain a favor from the Countess. And so the desperate Wanderer kneels and utters the forbidden formula and at that moment he is consumed by a fury of loathing, hating himself, hating the noblewoman who has put him in this position.
    The instant I gave in and told the Gräfin finally that I loved her, I wanted to force her to the floor and fondle her until she begged me to stop. I actually still felt a strong sexual desire, but it was sullen and violent and not so much sex as a visceral wish to assault her. I felt the stirrings of what it meant to be a